


some kind of clarity (when the letter's done and signed)

by miss_belivet



Category: Wonder Woman (2017), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff, Long-Distance Relationship, Long-Term Relationship(s), Love Letters, Period-Typical Sexism, Sickfic, World Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-01-16 09:07:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12339675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_belivet/pseuds/miss_belivet
Summary: Theirs had been a courtship of sly backward glances through mirrors and cryptic notes scrawled in the margins of old newspapers in cafés.(The AU in which Diana's villain surveillance turns into a long distance love affair.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Berlin, 1924**

The cool, quiet _shhhnk_ of metal-on-metal is Dr. Isabel Maru’s only warning before her wrist is bound in rope, pulled back behind her. Her steady stride stumbles and then halts; she allows herself a near-silent curse before she quickly sets about collecting herself, straightening her coat and righting her footing.

The alley is dark and devoid of witnesses, but it is not fear that made her pulse thrum.

Quite the opposite.

Her hand slips into her pocket, fingering a slip of paper. A knuckle brushes against the smooth glass of an ampoule—a single dose of her deadliest creation—and pushes it away. She turns, and two pairs of dark eyes meet, one peering over a discreet scarf and the other shadowed by the wide felt brim of a hat.

The rope about her wrist glows a bright, vibrant gold, illuminating the beautiful, sloping lines of her pursuer's face in the dim evening light.

The unscarred corner of Isabel's lips turns up, the silk of her scarf shifting against her cheeks. “You've been watching me.”

"Yes." Diana sighs, and her shoulders relax, as if the mere act of admitting to her surveillance is a weight off of them. "You are... not what I thought you were."

She steps forward until Isabel's spine stiffens instinctively, and a hand wrapped in gold reaches up, fingertips curling in the short, loose lock at Isabel's temple that never stays in place no matter how carefully she pins it back. They both see the movement for what it is: a gesture of intimacy also meant to shine a light into Isabel's eyes, to clearly read what little of her expression remains visible.

"You only just decided upon that? I read Wonder Woman's interview in the _Times."_ Isabel tilts her chin, lifting her face until she can meet Diana's eyes again. _I do not fear you._ _"'Dr. Maru is far more than she seems. It is not my place to condemn her.'"_

She keeps her gaze steady; she'll be damned if Diana can tell how often that phrase haunted her, teased her, how many nights she laid awake in bed, imagining the gentle set of Diana's lips, the calm expression that she so often wore in grainy, newsprint photographs as she said it. She wonders too frequently what her voice sounded like, unmediated by the rage of battle or the static laden crackle of the radio.

_Dr. Maru is far more than she seems._

_Dr. Maru is far more._

_Far more._

Diana's mouth twists at the impersonation, her own accent sounding foreign to her ears when layered over Isabel's rasp.

"I believe I also said the League of Nations would mete out the justice you deserved, and you deserved to be tried by your peers."

"My peers," Isabel scoffs. "My _German_ peers."

Diana nods, and although her brow creases, her eyes go soft. "And here you are."

"Three weeks in a cell awaiting trial for alleged war crimes, and now I roam free."

The hand in Isabel's hair wanders lower, tracing the line of her cheekbone, ascending the bridge of her nose, fingertips tucking themselves beneath the edge of her scarf. A smooth nail strokes the delicate, scarred skin at the tip of her nose, and Isabel winces.

She huffs.

Diana smiles.

She is so _small_ for a woman who wears a mask of indifference, if not outright disdain, for the public. Quite often, it reminds Diana of a kitten scrabbling at her hands with its tiny teeth and claws, sharp and prickling and ultimately harmless against her.

Perhaps it is wrong to liken a mass murderer to a creature as innocent as a kitten.

But even the most feral kitten capitulates if treated gently enough.

"Three long weeks." She shakes her head, almost managing to appear as if she disapproved. Isabel knows better, and she grins at the display; she remembers seeing Diana across the street when the officers dragged her from her home in her slip and dressing gown. "You are a  _horrible_  woman, Dr. Maru."

Her tone exaggerates, her nose wrinkles, teasing.

Diana hooks her fingers in the scarf, and a quick tug removes it from Isabel's face. The folds gather at her collar, and Diana follows them until she reaches bare skin, cupping Isabel's jaw in her hands.

Isabel gasps. Being touched by a goddess is  _intoxicating_.

Six years spent wondering and craving for some form of closeness with this woman—all the while, simultaneously rejecting any offer of meeting out of old anxieties and memories of a vengeful, inhuman warrior holding a tank over her head—do the reality of her touch no justice. Her hand is warm and gentle, her breath is sweet and cool on Isabel's cheeks. Her own hand stretches, yearning, and then she is grasping Diana's waist, keeping herself upright with the smooth leather of her belt.

One of Diana's hands leaves the twisted skin of her face and replaces itself at the nape of her neck, guiding her head back.

She searches Isabel's eyes for a long moment, and then her lips tilted into a softer smile, a fond look nearing adoration.

"You are _horrible,_ Isabel."

"I could be worse."

Diana's mouth presses to Isabel's scarred lips before she finishes speaking.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I simply had to write a little WonderPoison fluff to get the angst of Echo out of my system for a few days! Echo will update soon, rest assured, but I'm _living_ right now for this little idea of an alternate beginning to the relationship between Diana and Isabel. Right now, I think this will be three short-ish chapters with some flashbacks, but it might end up gaining a little epilogue at the end.
> 
> Let me know what you think? Comments are so loved, and kudos are much appreciated! <3


	2. Chapter 2

**Madrid, September 1920**

Isabel jerks, and the seamstress's pin sinks through the thick material of her dress and into her shoulder.

She glances into the long row of mirrors in front of her to make sure the woman in the doorway isn't a hallucination.

She isn't.

Two years have passed, writing that woman—that  _anomaly_ —off as a traumatized dramatization of memory, and now Isabel is left, half-naked and with a pin in her shoulder, looking like a fool as she gapes.

She had been keeping count of the time, if only because she had nothing else to do. She finds that she waits quite frequently, nowadays. She waits for her infamy to die down, so she can join the faculty at a laboratory that will not bat an eye at the blood on her resumé. She waits for her colleagues to publish their books and articles, so she might have some reprieve from the boredom that fills her idle hours. She waits for the Allied nations to arrest her, for the few members of German High Command that she hadn't murdered to find her, for some bitter victim of her gasses to stalk her.

But no.

No, it couldn’t be that simple for Isabel Maru.

Because here  _she_ is, as statuesque and beautiful and intriguing and terrifying as Isabel remembers her.

In Madrid.

At Isabel's fitting.

Staring at her through the mirror.

 _Diana,_  she thinks, a name seared into her mind as surely as the scar on her face.

Diana doesn't look surprised.

It is peculiar, that placid expression. Diana looks as if she is patiently waiting for Isabel to finish her fitting so they might talk, and that sets Isabel into motion. She shrugs off the dress quickly enough that Ana jabs her with another pin as the length of jersey falls to the ground. She regrets it for just a moment as she steps into her skirt, throws on her coat, and mutters something about cancelling the order.

_"Doctora!"_

The bell above the door is already ringing by the time Ana calls out to her, and Isabel sets off in great strides down the sidewalk, searching her deep pockets for the vials she always carries with her.

Her blouse and her hat are still in the shop, but she decides that she can sacrifice them.

She glances back once when she reaches the end of the street, and Diana is nowhere to be seen.

 

* * *

 

**Valencia, February 1921**

A sleek black car slows and then parks across the street, and Diana raises a brow at the height of the luggage stacked at its fender.

She hadn't imagined Isabel Maru to be such a materialistic woman.

The chauffeur kills the engine and makes his way around the car, opening the door onto the sidewalk for his passenger. Isabel unfolds herself easily, and Diana watches as she reaches back into the back seat for a leather satchel that seems far too stuffed to carry comfortably. Most of her figure is obscured by passing traffic, the low brim of her hat, and a curious scarf wrapped around her face.

Isabel says something to the chauffeur, points to her small tower of suitcases, and then waves at the short townhouse in front of them.

Diana also hadn't expected her to gravitate toward city centers, given her reputation, but Isabel seems to have no shortage of conveniently located, well-appointed homes in the midst of the general populace; so far, Diana has found three. She wonders whether Isabel paid in blood money earned during the war or the remains of her late father’s estate.

(And then she wonders whether that inheritance  _was_ blood money, but old newspapers in a library in Madrid report that Don Luis Maru's bereaved daughter would remain at her university in Germany instead of attending his funeral. Condolences or flowers sent by post are not welcome. Although it is a frosty response from Maru’s only surviving child, it is an acceptable alibi.)

A few brisk steps leave Isabel at the door, and an older woman, stooped with age, answers her knock. Upon seeing Isabel, she seems to straighten up, and her sour expression lightens into something Diana cannot make out clearly from a distance. But the way she grasps Isabel by the shoulders and kisses her scarf over her unscarred cheek is a more obvious indicator of their relationship, as is the way Isabel bends at the waist to receive the kiss.

Diana takes a long sip of her tea, taps the end of her pen on the table in front of her, and watches the poor man struggle with Isabel's belongings.

She tears a page out of the back of her book and begins to write.

_Dr. Maru,_

_I did not mean to frighten you away from Madrid. I bear you no ill will. Surely that night the last two years will have proven my intentions? I come to you seeking peace, but I have begun to hear rumors about the development of chemical weapons by scientists formerly aligned with the Central Powers. I would like to talk with you, only talk, if at all possible..._

Thirty minutes later, when she pays for her drink and crosses the street to deposit her impromptu letter in the small box outside the house, a movement in the glass panes decorating the door catches her eye. The shape is distorted, blurred by the intricate etching on the glass, but it is clearly Isabel at the end of the hall, having dropped something and knelt to pick it up. Diana watches for a moment, and then Isabel's head lifts, her dark eyes glaring in Diana’s direction.

Diana drops the letter in the box and turned away.

The next day, the house is empty and an envelope addressed to Diana is left peeking out from the mailbox.

Inside, the page from her book is neatly folded, her own missive crossed out with sharp lines of green ink.

_I have no interest in talking to you._

 

* * *

 

**Göttingen, September 1921**

Isabel suspects that she is little more than a cautionary tale to the students who sit in on her guest lectures in Göttingen, but it feels good to return to some semblance of a career. The students respect her well enough, but her old professors, on the other hand, are another story entirely. Doktor Lange possesses the nerve to cross himself when she peers into his office late one afternoon to ask where the labs have been moved.

And to think, he had once written her a glowing letter of recommendation.

A handful of weeks into her brief visit to the city she called home for a half-decade, she finds herself sitting in a tiny cafe she once frequented, the annoying morning sun glaring into her eyes, and she forces herself to turn her attention to the newspaper on her table rather than imagine the blinding, blonde halo that should be sitting in the seat beside her, hovering over her shoulder.

 _Tch,_ she can hear that familiar voice saying.  _Who ever would have given Mueller control over the old botanical garden? I doubt he believes he even needs to water the plants!_

Isabel’s lip twitch, a phantom of her fond smile of old, until she imagines her reply.  _You were already dead when they established the new one, my dear, and Mueller isn’t allowed anywhere near it as long as Ellenburg is alive. Don’t fret._

She turns the page quickly and focuses instead on a panicked article outlining the war reparations Germany is meant to pay out to Allied countries until a quiet clatter of porcelain signals the arrival of her coffee. She reaches for it without looking—it will be subject to closer examination once closer to her eyes and nose, but there is no sense in panicking the people around her—and her little finger brushes the sharp edge of a slip of paper.

Her breath catches.

She scours the room, but there are too many packed into the small space, too many women in low-brimmed hats.  _She_ is among them, Isabel knows.  _Diana_. She thought the figure in her window in Valencia was a trick of the light until she found the letter in her mailbox, and she has been living with one eye cast over her shoulder since.

The note seemed heartfelt enough, but even Isabel can fake a convincing apology.

She lifts the new scrap from the saucer her cup arrived on, unfolds it, and prepares for the worst with tensed shoulders.

_I am not accusing you of anything._

She reads the tiny missive over and over again, lingering on the angular strokes of the handwriting.

It is a fake, it has to be, but Isabel chews the inside of her remaining cheek until she comes to a decision.

 _Throw the dog a bone,_ she thinks. Give her the information she wants, and she will leave you alone.

She digs a pen out of the crumb-littered depths of her satchel, scrawls her response, and leaves it beneath the untouched cup of coffee.

_Fritz Haber. Kaiser Wilhelm Institute._

She was tempted to add,  _"He has been stealing my work for years,"_ but that is too close to a written confession for comfort. She taps her pen on the paper, imagining what Diana might do if she writes,  _“He stole my Nobel Prize,”_ instead, but that sounds far too petty and bitter, even for her.

So Isabel rolls her eyes, tucks, the note beneath her cup, and stands to leave. Her work earned countless medals and commendations during the war, but now the war is lost. She is the criminal, and irritating, grating  _Fritz is_  allowed to continue developing her formulas without a single black mark on his equally bloody record.

_Dr. Poison._

A man at the table beside her flinches when she slung her bag none-too-gently over her shoulder and leaves the cafe without a backward glance.

Diana is already standing at her table when she passes the long windows outside the cafe, holding the note, and then she turns her face to Isabel. The sun glitters off of the window, off of the shining enamel of the tabletop, off of her. She smiles brightly, and Isabel scowls back.

 

* * *

 

**Berlin, December 1921**

Diana palms the slip of paper in her hand and tries not to attract too much attention as she smiles to herself.

Little victories are still victories.

In her hand, she holds the third note, the third name, that Isabel had slipped her by leaving it in the pocket of her coat at a ballet. The message is longer than any of the others, and she suspects that it is as close as Isabel Maru will ever get to effusive praise.

 _I saw what you said in the_ _Times_ _after you led the authorities to Haber. It is much appreciated. The notes would be as well, but you seem to have forgotten to return a certain notebook I kept from 1913 to 1919._

_Give my regards to Dr. Hugo Stoltzenberg._

_P.S. I prefer Pepita and Ivanov's original choreography. Do remember that next Christmas._

The name is familiar to her now. Haber, Stoltzenberg, Grignard, Maru: they all exist together in a hushed, clandestine cadre of murderers best known for their degrees and doctorates rather than their victims. Although it seems that Isabel has been blacklisted in her field, her male counterparts continue her work, creating gasses for Spain and Russia and Germany, despite the League of Nation’s talks to ban chemical weaponry outright.

She finds Stoltzenberg in Lower Saxony, and four more names await her when she returns to Berlin.

 

* * *

 

**Paris, January 1922**

Isabel tracks Diana to Paris from her sixth letter; it isn’t hard, seeing as she last used a slip of paper embossed with one  _Professeur Curie’s_ name to continue her long-distance interrogation.

Although she knows it was likely a deliberate blunder on Diana’s part, Isabel still fails to beat down her jealousy.

Her work far surpasses that of the Curies, in her opinion, but she can never forget that particular schoolgirl fascination. Somewhere, she is certain, a picture of a serious woman standing over an Erlenmeyer flask—clipped from a newspaper by shaking, excited sixteen-year-old Isabel—is still pasted to the inside of an old desk drawer. So she stews on the fact that Diana is in  _her_ classroom,  _her_ lecture halls, while she is on a cold, rickety train somewhere in Belgium.

(Isabel has her doubts about the woman’s continued experimentation with radium, but it seems somewhat hypocritical to criticize Marie Curie’s methods when her own are so unconventional.)

Arriving in France is easy; the officials who recognize her name seem to hold less of a grudge against her than those of other Allied nations. She is the one to which they sent soil samples in 1920, and she is the one who marked out the  _Zone Rouge_ and kept their idiot farmers from poisoning themselves in the remains of the trenches, after all.

She was desperate for the work, and it counts toward reparations, she supposes. It was always those damned  _reparations_ with the Allies.

But, after finding a room in a quiet hotel and sending off a letter to an old colleague in Paris, it is not hard to locate a tall, inhumanly beautiful woman who took classes from  _Professeur Curie_.

She watches and waits. She sits in on one of the lectures, smirking at the young men leaning and fidgeting in their seats to see around the woman in the first row, pretending to be utterly consumed by the basic molecular structures on the board when that same woman turns to look at her. Her heartbeat stutters when Professor Curie fixes her with a judgmental look, but it is nothing compared to what happens when the little, enigmatic grin that turns up the corners of Diana’s lips when she realizes who the interloper is.

One grey morning near the end of her trip, she settles herself, bundled against the snow and the cold, in the Jardin des Tuileries, clutching coffee from a nearby stand in one hand and a pen in the other. On her lap, yesterday's newspaper lies folded, opened to the crossword. Her scarf is loose around her neck, the adhesive for her mask rendered useless by the wintery weather; instead, her scar is fully exposed as she sips at her drink, the frigid air soothing the residual burning that often plagues her.

Diana appears, just as Isabel knows she will, for an early walk through the park. She lingers at statue of Theseus and the minotaur, and then her eyes find Isabel.

Isabel tosses the newspaper on the bench beside her, deliberately enough to send a message. A few moments later, a thrill of adrenaline—Diana's skirt brushes her knees, a touch mediated by several thick layers of wool, as she stoops to pick up Isabel's discarded paper and continues walking, her wide, pretty eyes meeting Isabel's for only a second as she passes.

Isabel stands and leaves the park—and Paris—without looking back.

_The French never look too closely at a scarred woman. I know what I am. What are you, Diana Prince?_

The answer arrives at her Berlin apartment two weeks later, in a stamped envelope that indicates the letter was sent through official postal systems. The stationary is cheap, nothing from Curie’s desk this time, but Diana uses three pages of it to tell Isabel exactly what she wants to know.

Isabel flicks the thin paper with the tip of her index finger.

Surely a goddess deserves better.

 

* * *

 

**Berlin, March 1922**

Isabel wheezes.

Diana frowns and turns her gaze from the sterile bedlinens. She casts a glance out at the hospital’s hallway—deserted. She wonders to where the night nurse could have disappeared at the tender hour of three in the morning.

Isabel wheezes again.

So Diana takes it upon herself to wring out the damp cloth on Isabel’s forehead and dip it back into the basin of cold water. She brushes sweaty locks of dark hair out of her face, traces her scar—the delicate skin flaking and irritated after days without proper care—with a corner of the cloth, and replaces it on her forehead. She tucks the blankets that Isabel had kicked to the end of her bed back around her shoulders, presses the back of her fingers to an overheated cheek, shushes a miserable moan. She refills the glass of water by the bedside. She straightens the small pile of papers and books Isabel brought with her. She sighs. She checks Isabel’s temperature again.

The entire ordeal is a terrible reminder that Isabel is human. Breakably, tragically human. Stubborn, too, if the severity of her illness is meant to be a clue, though Diana finds that she blames the doctors and their callous shortsightedness instead.

She remembers the influenza in the early days of her life in man’s world, in 1918. They, apparently, did not, and now Isabel lays, choking and feverish, on the fluid that continues to collect in her lungs.

No one else had come to visit her. Diana suspects that the doctors used that to their advantage, that they used it to ignore the woman dying just down the hall from their offices, and the lasso burns against her thigh.

“—Anna.” Isabel’s eyelids twitch, and Diana takes her hand as she begins, weakly, to try to push her covers away again. “...ana.”

It sounds like her name, but she cannot be sure, and Isabel is barely lucid. She squeezes Isabel’s palm and whispers “I’m here” and “Go back to sleep,” into her ear.

 

* * *

 

**Berlin, April 1922**

Isabel is still weak; she hardly has the energy to do much more than sit beside the hearth in a comfortable armchair and listen to whatever overwrought drama is playing over the radio. Singers warble and saxophones grate at her ears, and then—

“Breaking news: we interrupt this program live from London, where the Wonder Woman has just stopped…”

Diana speaks in English, a German translator struggling to keep pace, and Isabel leans her head back and sighs.

 

* * *

 

**Madrid, July 1922**

A frantic search leads Diana to Madrid, where Isabel and the old woman from Valencia sit out on a balcony in the bright sunshine. Isabel looks content; she is talking with her aunt (a distant relation from her father’s side, Diana now knows), and when she coughs,  _Tía_ Maru rubs her back, says something sternly, angrily, and adds honey to her tea.

Isabel catches her eye and raises a questioning brow.

Diana smiles.

 

* * *

 

**Madrid, September 1922**

Isabel knows she is here, somewhere, lingering in the background behind her. She pays Diana no mind; instead, she pushes open the cemetery’s creaking gate. It is a miniscule plot of land outside the city, hidden by overgrown hedges and trees, because no one who passes wants to see the pathetic graves within.

She winds her way through headstones, some elaborate, some merely gatherings of stones to alert the gravediggers not to accidentally exhume a forgotten grave. She stops at a simple, marble headstone, the name and date already fading, and sits, leaning back against it. From her satchel, she pulls a thick stack of letters—carefully ignoring the smaller pile accumulating beside it—and places them on her lap, but she does not read them.

When she twitches awake again, the sun has fallen below the horizon, the sky barely tinged with purple as the day fades. Diana stands just beyond the small iron gate, her foot over the twig that snapped and woke Isabel up.

 

* * *

 

**Paris, December 1922**

The letters begin to come with a greater frequency. _I moved back to Berlin_ and  _Your professor sent me a cease and desist over the summer_ and  _I think I am going to be arrested soon_. They talk about chemistry, about Diana’s exams, about the bright young things in America that seem to be taking over the radio with their jazz. Isabel recommends books, and she even sends notes saved from her own college days. Diana tells her about Themyscira, and even if Isabel doesn’t believe a single word she writes, she doesn’t let Diana know. Diana teases her about the doodling in the margins of her notes; Isabel sends back a clipping from one of Diana’s previous letters, a poorly drawn horse with a little girl astride its back, without comment.

When Diana sends an invitation for her New Year’s party, the RSVP returns, a furious  ** _NO_  **scrawled out after Diana’s innocuous  _Will you be attending?_

 

* * *

 

**Berlin, February 1923**

Isabel ignores Diana’s letters until she cannot. Her movements have been limited; the treaty has finally been signed, a list of war criminals handed over to the German courts, and she is being inspected by various agencies. It is a farce, she knows, but she still leaves a young intelligence agent unconscious on her doorstep when he asks one too many questions about the letters she keeps receiving from Paris.

So she answers one letter, her sentences terse and short.

Diana’s response arrives in a blue envelope with a pair of violets on the front.

Isabel sends one back with a hastily scribbled sprig of heather on the back.

 

* * *

 

**Berlin, June 1923**

After she graduates, Diana rents an apartment across the street from Isabel— _For the convenience of the matter,_ she tells Sammy over the telephone, not a lie but not the entire truth,  _Germany is centrally located_ —and doesn’t contain her bright smile when she sees her new neighbor hesitate, stumble, and then tip her hat as she is moving boxes up to her third-story walkup from the sidewalk one morning.

 

* * *

 

  **Berlin, November 1923**

Isabel misses Diana.

She left a letter, of course, but the lights in her apartment no longer twinkle across the street at night, she is no longer showing up at a table in the library several stacks away from Isabel. Isabel no longer sees her in the mirror at the department store or through a window at a cafe or standing in line at the post office. Isabel listens to the radio for any sign of her, scours the newspapers, but she has disappeared, leaving behind only letters.

Another letter arrives, and Isabel answers it.

The loneliness still gnaws at her.

 

* * *

 

**Munich, February 1924**

Diana watches from the back of a long room as Isabel delivers her speech.

Isabel catches her eye as she descends the stage's steps, and she looks relieved.

 

* * *

 

**Berlin, March 1924**

The officers pull at her arm, ripping the dense linen of her dressing gown, but Isabel merely stares at the dark figure across the street.

It is midnight, six years after the end of the war, and she is finally being arrested for ninety thousand deaths that the courts have deemed unjust.

Ninety thousand.

Her mind boggles at the number, hovering somewhere between pleasure and disbelief and shock.

"Doktor!" one of the men barks, and she is nearly lifted off her feet by the next pull.

She is shoved, painfully, into the back of a car.

 _It is a farce,_  she tells herself.  _I will not be executed before—_


	3. Chapter 3

**Berlin, 1924**

“Isabel…” Diana is breathless, her thick accent dripping over the syllables of Isabel’s name like honey, and Isabel gasps. The strangled half-breath sounds wheezy and weak compared to the measured panting and decadent whispering in her ear, but she doesn’t mind it; her head tilts, lifting her ear to Diana’s lips, and Diana says her name again and again.

_Isabel._

_Isabel._

_Isabel._

She has never been a woman to admire beauty, but she thinks of the word _lovely_ as she pushes her hips up, one hand buried in wild curls and the other stroking wet silk. With her fingertips, she coaxes a moan from low in Diana’s throat.

Isabel thought that being touched by a goddess was intoxicating, but touching her is so much more rewarding.

Lips skim over her scar, leaving a trail of phantom kisses in their wake, searching until they press firmly to Isabel’s mouth.

And then Isabel is tensing, crying out into the kiss, and Diana follows, holding herself carefully over Isabel as her back arches and she trembles. She clenches around Isabel's fingers and buries her face in Isabel's hair, her breath coming in hot, uneven bursts.

It is the most attractive thing Isabel has ever witnessed, so she fights the lethargy seeping into her limbs to take advantage of the moment. Her legs wrap around a firm waist, her hand freed from Diana’s hair, and she _pushes_ until she is straddling her lover.

Diana smiles a lazy, indulgent smile up at her. She is relaxed beneath Isabel, content and boneless, and her damp hand traces circles around Isabel’s bare thigh.

Isabel doesn’t know what to say; she has always had time to craft her responses to the woman beneath her. She has written and proofread and burned inadequate drafts, and the immediacy of speaking to her directly now is a terrifying novelty. Diana seems to understand. She reaches up, pressing a palm to Isabel’s back until they are chest to chest, Isabel lying comfortably on top of her. She turns her head, examining the tall stack of books on Diana’s bedside table, but the titles are already familiar to her from their last exchange of letters.

 

* * *

 

In the morning, Isabel dresses quietly. She knows Diana is awake, and Diana knows that she knows. Every few moments, Isabel will catch her peering at her through her lashes from the bed and pretend not to notice. She runs Diana’s brush through her hair and then tucks the length of it beneath her scarf. The heels of her boots echo on the wooden floor as she picks her way across the modest flat to the door, and then the sound fades down the hall.

Diana watches from her window as Isabel crosses the street, enters her own building, and then flicks the lights on in her third-story apartment.

 

* * *

 

The next day, a desperate letter arrives from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, begging Isabel to return to her studies in their prestigious labs.

The entire affair leaves a bitter taste in her mouth. Endless years had passed in which she waited for any word from her colleagues, and none ever saw fit to invite her back into a proper lab. None saw fit to recognize her intelligence with a proper salary. After twenty years of brilliant contribution in her chosen field, she had been shooed out of the door like a bit of vermin and kicked on the way out, so she made do with poorly paid lectures and what remained of her dead father’s wealth while they developed _her_ theories, stole _her_ ideas, earned _her_ glory.

She hates them. With every fiber of her being, she hates the men who pointed their fingers and called her Dr. Poison behind their hands, made her the scapegoat, the _witch,_ and left her to rot.

She sits in the stiff chair behind her desk for several hours, imagining which formulas she would use to massacre the staff at the institute. She plans how she might slip into that Belgian prison where Haber and Stoltzenberg and Grignard are rotting to watch them choke, one by one, on poisons that they lifted from the pages of her notes. She imagines contacting their families afterward, confirming their wives’ worst nightmares and letting the children know that Papa died because he was a filthy mass-murderer and a thief.

She doesn’t.

They are in prison, and they will be executed someday— _soon,_ she hopes—for treason. She escaped jail with a slap on the wrist from the German government, per the Treaty of Versailles, because she had no record of continuing to create chemical weapons after the war like they did, with their shady under-the-table contracts with Russia and Spain and Japan.

She raises her cup of lukewarm tea to them and tears the letter to shreds before tossing it in the wastepaper basket at her feet.

 

* * *

 

Diana brushes Isabel’s hair out from her face.

She looks calmer when she sleeps, her brow smoothed and her lips no longer pursed. She pouts in her sleep sometimes, and that is when Diana inches closer, wrapping an arm around Isabel’s waist or pressing a gentle kiss to her temple.

Isabel is not a good woman, that much she knows.

But when she turns in Diana’s embrace, unconsciously burying her head in the crook of her neck or twining a bit of hair around her fingers, it is easy to see that she was good once.

She can be good again, and that is what Diana loves about her.

She loves the spiky rose that Isabel sketches in the corner of a scrap of paper, the way she insists on going to Valencia every few months to check on her aunt, the wry smile she gives Diana whenever she says something sweet. She loves the way Isabel appeared at her door two months ago, harried and desperate, and made love to her until she was certain that Diana was real again.

Isabel hadn't left yet, despite her insistence that her apartment was the better of the two. She keeps the fire lit when Diana feels herself called out into the world to settle a dispute somewhere, she knows how to drape a quilt over the radiator so it's warm when they go to bed, she explains more patiently than Diana believed possible when a book references some obscure detail of man's world, and she complains that Diana's coffee is too weak and her tea is too strong.

Diana loves that, too.


End file.
